8. Line marks nameswavy registers,a note with folds on the edge of a used sheeta note with staples and tapecrumpled paper, pencil smudges half illegible“isolate flakes” hybrid, subversive, inchoate.

The writing on the open pagethe underside of itselfas if the underside made words

and, when the busy ripples on the surface stilled,one saw that other taking shape:

the abstract rush of untranslated wordsthe space a presence possessed by other spaces

white traceblank trancewhisper hold.

9. Being the thing that light comes round, it comes to knowlight.

Black, and black and white;yes, and no, and yes and no;being and not:the flicker over space-rectangle, letter line,spatter marks, iffegular alphabet, rath and late;a scrape, a set of incisions, a score in air:for various workhas been done in and over this place

various works or workings, worksby,of,different hands

hand-space trackstrek lines

(a trace of spotted lightgleams around the tricky edge of substance…)

Horace, Odes: “I have completed a monument more permanent than bronze and loftier than the regal memorial of pyramids – a monument which no squalling rain, no gale-force winds can overthrow. . . . I shall not wholly die; a lot of me will escape the funeral parlor.” (My modification of a Penguin translation of III, xxx.) “Making light” and “weaving webs” are H.D. on film; “tell the white marks” is Williams on Marianne Moore, and “isolate flakes” alters Spring and All.

Rachel Blau DuPlessis is the author of the multivolume poem Drafts (Weslyan and Salt), Interstices (Subpress), Graphic Novella (Xexoxia), Eurydics (Further Other Books Works), and Days and Works (Ahsahta).